


a sigh to answer a sigh

by dovahfiin



Series: out on the side of the hill [1]
Category: Silent Hill (2006)
Genre: Cybil Bennet lives, F/F, Feelings, Introspection, Other, a 'ship if you squint, alternative universe, that gay shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 16:58:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12752433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovahfiin/pseuds/dovahfiin
Summary: Cybil is returned to Silent Hill, and together with Sharon and Rose flee the cursed town.There may yet be more later. As most of my projects, this one already needs to be retooled.Title affectionately borrowed from the James Stephens poem 'The Coolin'.





	a sigh to answer a sigh

Her smooth skin, unmarred by burns and the peeling heat of a barbaric death, seems to glow even in the stark falling ash. Her leather jacket and helmet are intact, that cloying bottle dye job a welcome flash of light in the darkness. Her uniform is no longer unsightly with dirt, sweat, or other effluvia; she is whole, and Rose's surprise is muted by exhaustion.

"Well, that's a warm welcome."

Rose turns to Sharon, lethargic and clingy. The girl is nonplussed by Cybil's sudden and unmolested reappearance, but considering whatever horrors she herself had witnessed, it's no wonder. "Who is that, Mommy?"

"A helper." Cybil's resulting smile is genuine and a welcome reprieve from the lingering memories of the night before. Rose scoops Sharon into her arms, tossing her head backward to invite Cybil into the still quiet of the church.

That place too holds no evidence of the events from the night before. There is no blood, no barbed wire, and the overwhelming stench of charred meat, the metallic tang of blood, and faint traces of antiseptic are gone. It's musky, wooden; like any church she's ever been in. There is nothing to indicate that anyone had set foot inside the sacred space since the town's original demise, let alone a complete massacre.

Sharon has climbed down from Rose's lap, sitting on the steps of the narthex and humming softly to amuse herself. Rose struggles with the questions rolling over on the tip of her tongue.

"Do you. . . remember?"

"Everything."

"The pain?"

Cybil hesitates. "Yes. But I feel nothing now."

Rose offers a faint smile when the double meaning occurs to her. "What happened?"

It's a loaded question, she knows, and she's already prepared if Cybil can't or won't tell her what had occurred after her 'death'. She's learned enough about Silent Hill to know that it is a machination of a nightmare; that none of it is real, save for the zealots who had inhabited the church. Cybil is lost in thought for only a moment.

"She rejected me. Alessa."

"I don't understand."

Cybil sits forward, elbows on her knees. Rose struggles against the urge to move some of her hair away from her eyes.

"Two years ago, some maniac threw a boy down a mine shaft here. He had such bad burns his skin was peeling off of him. I kept him alive using the rudimentary medical training they give you at the academy, and it took them three days to find us."

"Did he live?"

Cybil nods, her eyebrows steepling. "He did. Which is why Alessa chose to release me; a soul for a soul."

Rose didn't know much about Alessa beyond that she had been badly abused leading up to her immolation, and of course the hatred that grew as a result. What little she had been told by Alessa's avatar, whose true identity was something she didn't even want to consider, had been enough to give her the conviction to avenge Alessa. It would seem that the girl - no, woman - could be fairly benevolent.

"She didn't kill her mother. All the others died, but not her."

"A mother is god in the eyes of a child."

"That's what I told her."

When they leave, there's no way to tell if that permeating darkness is nipping at the heels of the day. There's nothing out there but softly, slowly raining ash. No monsters to greet them but for those created by their fear, and they don't materialize as the three of them navigate the streets they've come to know like the lines in their palms. The Jeep starts after sputtering slowly to life, and Sharon is already asleep in the back seat. Cybil steals a glance at her upended motorcycle, and it's Rose's turn to let her clammy hand fall to a leather-clad thigh.

The light doesn't shift; the ash doesn't stop falling, even as the road opens before them over the chasm that had kept them there. Some rain and a hint of incandescent light falls against the roof of the Jeep, but it's not enough to convince Rose that they'll be met with the same reality they left. Cybil is deathly quiet, her eyes fixed ahead of them, ever-vigilant and unafraid even as fear begins to boil deep within Rose's belly. As the miles pass, the sky clears even as a thin layer of ash covers the windshield.

Rose's phone, a forgotten link to the outside world, begins to vibrate against her breastbone.

"Answer it." Cybil's voice is even, smooth, unaffected. Rose's pulse quickens.

"Hello? Chris?"

The familiar, rolling brogue greets her coolly. "Rose."

****

* * *

They're huddled in the house, the world only slightly more vibrant and life-like. They've long since accepted that grayness will follow them wherever they go. As Rose and Cybil trade off in the retelling, Chris sits back, slack-jawed and eerily silent.

"Everyone's dead, but others will take their place as the dark essence of Alessa breathes life back into those who fled Silent Hill. Sharon, you, Rose - me - no one is safe."

Chris' jaw crunches. His hands rake against the scruff of his beard, neglected in favor of the fervent search for his wife and daughter. "I'm angry" he says simply. Rose bristles.

"You have no right. You were willing to let her suffer, to possibly let her die - no doctor could have prevented this."

His face burns red. "And you don't think I've done anything in your absence? I've committed crimes, Rose. Everything I uncovered is being protected, as if speaking of it aloud is going to reduce the entire fucking city to ash."

Something clicks in Cybil's head. "Do you know a policeman by the name of Thomas Gucci?"

Chris nods. "Yeah. That's the prick who arrested me at the orphanage. All I wanted were answers, and instead I got road blocks at every turn."

"Thomas is the singular most effective officer we have, and he's the only one who saw firsthand what happened to Alessa. If anyone understands what you've been through, it's him. It would seem as if you're the one who doesn't get it."

"Enough." The word is more plaintive than Rose would have wanted, but the bickering ends abruptly. "A pissing match isn't going to solve any of this. We need to leave."

" _We_?" Chris is incredulous. "We need to continue on with our lives, Rose. We need to thank Officer Bennett for her help, and we need to move on."

"There is no moving on." The space between Cybil's condemning words, and the force with which she spoke them, struck Rose as otherworldly. Something inside of her flipped, watching the cop's eyes dig holes into Chris, who was visibly taken aback. "Sharon bears the blood of Alessa. As long as a descendant lives, the absolution continues. Their world does not exist in the same reality and isn't governed by the same rules as ours. Rose is right; we have to leave. We belong to Silent Hill, whether we want to or not."

"Get out."

Chris has always been given to a hairtrigger temper, and Rose doesn't indulge it. When she looks at her husband now, any affection she had felt for him in the past, no matter how vague, was gone. He was returning Cybil's indignant stare, shaking his head before rising himself to find Sharon. "I want none of this."

Rose feels the last tendrils of patience leave her body. "It doesn't matter what you want, Chris. The darkness is coming, and you can either run from it or be consumed. Those are our choices. This is our life; this is our daughter. Please."

There is no doubt, if there had ever been before, that the three people in that living room had been forever changed. Where the fork in the road now plainly lies, Rose allows herself to be angry with Chris for the first time since the sleepwalking had begun. For their starved marriage, for the daughter for whom they had fought so hard to provide a good life, for the promises he had broken and the lengths he had gone to only to reject their shared reality - it was too much. Let him burn, then.

"I can't, Rose. Go."

She moves passed him to find Sharon. He shoots out an arm, blocking her path. "Without her."

Recoiling in disdain, Rose swallows a sudden urge to slap him. "Why?"

"I haven't seen what you have. I don't entirely believe it, and maybe that's the best way to help Sharon now. It won't be a normal life."

Cybil tilts her head. "He's right. Gucci will come for Sharon if only because of what Chris knows. What happened there - it runs deep. Especially in Tom."

Outside of Silent Hill, they were in danger of ripping open the wounds that still lingered from what happened there. Inside Silent Hill, they weren't safe from the simmering wrath of Alessa; it seemed like they couldn't win. The only choice, the only sound choice in a world gone mad, was to leave Sharon with Chris. It broke her heart and stole the breath from her body, but somehow the strength in Cybil's steady, rhythmic sense blanketed calm over the three of them.

"All right."

The goodbyes, such as they are, are thankfully anticlimactic. They decide that Rose will leave without saying goodbye, if only to preserve what little slivers of normalcy the girl is clinging to. Chris will tell her that Rose has to leave in order to save her, and perhaps the only thing that will serve as a balm for that wound is Alessa's presence within Sharon.

Cybil insists on driving. As if speaking it aloud caused the lingering darkness to abet, the sky is ashless and the rain has stopped. It's all clouds, but not the overcast of soot they became accustomed to in Silent Hill. It's normal; it's peaceful.

"What happened to the boy?"

She doesn't know why she asked; it's primarily none of her business, but digging up Cybil's considerable connections to Silent Hill and knowingly rehashing something painful was a step beyond. Rose immediately feels bad.

"He lived, initially. Killed himself last Christmas. Blew his brains out with his daddy's shotgun."

"I'm sorry."

They remain in suspended silence, that chord from before still not quite resolved but reverberating something like a new beginning as the yellow paint on the road blurred. In her peripheral vision, Rose waits for Cybil to stop silently moving her mouth.

"I'm sorry I couldn't go down with you. I'm sorry I left you alone."

"It had to be me."

"I know. It just - it reminded me of the boy. I didn't think I'd see you again; didn't think I could be lucky enough to make it out twice."

When Cybil's hesitant hand covers Rose's, it's a homecoming. They drive, and they leave themselves to their own ruminations as the future, such as it is now, stretches out before them in a promise of darkness. For now, there is light; and that is all they can see.


End file.
